Nov 6, 2008

Attenhut! The Army is Now Web 2.0 Ready!

General Jeffrey Sorenson, the CIO of the US Army, dressed in battle fatigues, addressed the audience. The "Army of the Future" is preparing for an era of persistent conflict. Geez.

General Sorenson showed an interesting chart that shows commercial technology and army usage of that technology on the same graph. There's basically an 8-10 year lag between the development of a technology, such as the Internet, and the deployment of that technology in the Army.

Battle Command Knowledge System (BCKS). The Army is using software similar to WebEx or Go-To-Meeting for their training and battle planning.

Command Post of the Future: a Web 2.0 app that integrates satellite, video, VOIP, 3D topography, DB access, and collaboration tools for real-time battle management. This tool was developed by DARPA.

In their overall architecture, the Army is using Keyhole Markup Language (KML) to access data from Google Earth and other mapping databases. Field units are using RSS to stay informed with battle commands and information.

About Me

Vinay Pai is an experienced technology executive with a track record of leading global high-performing organizations, driving business growth globally, and driving technology transformation at scale. As the Vice President for Intuit Developer Platform, Vinay leads the platform strategy and business segment chartered to grow the Intuit ecosystem through a vibrant community of third-party applications and developers. Over the past seven years at Intuit, Vinay has held a variety of leadership roles at Intuit. As VP of Engineering, Vinay launched a new offering for accountants, scaled QuickBooks globally, and transformed the tech stack. Vinay has also led the Engineering teams for Intuit Online Payroll and QuickBooks Online, where he introduced high availability, disaster recovery and launched new global offerings. Vinay joined Intuit in 2009 as part of the PayCycle acquisition. Vinay also has held leadership roles in a cloud startup, Sun Microsystems, and Schlumberger. At Sun, Vinay helped develop Java Enterprise Edition and Web Services. Early in his career, Vinay also founded a three-person startup on the Apple platform that delivered three products.